Deputies Suspended For Overtime Deal

Palm Beach County Sheriff's Lt. John Morrissey wanted to do someone on his staff a favor. So he decided to give a corporal a deal: Get overtime without working it.

Morrissey, who oversees the sheriff's dog unit, allowed Cpl. Richard Logsdon to receive $1,754 from 54 hours of unworked overtime pay between November 2007 and June 2008, records show.

The lieutenant told his captain: "He's getting screwed. So this is what we came up with to fix it."

Morrissey instructed the three sergeants in his unit to approve the overtime pay to make up the difference he thought Logsdon deserved because he did the work of a field training officer without the title, so he got less pay, investigators said.

All five deputies involved in the falsified documents were suspended in April for policy violations.

Sheriff's detectives found probable cause to charge Morrissey and Logsdon with official misconduct, grand theft and organized scheme to defraud, but the State Attorney's Office declined to prosecute the criminal charges.

Sgts. Kevin Marks, Michael Anderson and Jonathan Newcomb were suspended three days each. Morrissey received a 20-day suspension and Logsdon received five days.

According to internal affairs documents:

Logsdon, a dog handler who earns $70,272, was ineligible to receive field training officer's pay because he was not certified.

Further, Sheriff's Office commanders said the unit needed no more field training officers.

And Logsdon didn't go through the proper channels to file a grievance.

Morrissey and Logsdon's lawyer, Gary Lippman, said the corporal, who's worked at the Sheriff's Office since 1998, was entitled to the raise.

"The mistakes were administrative," Lippman said. "It has a demoralizing effect on personnel who were involved."

He said Logsdon should have been considered a field training officer, responsible for training new deputies, because that's what he was doing. It's a role he should have come into because of his time and expertise in the unit, Morrissey told investigators.

"Knowing [Logsdon] and his work ethic, he probably puts in 20 hours a month uncompensated." Morrissey told investigators.

The case is similar to one in May involving six deputies accused of overtime fraud. They were charged criminally and are going through court hearings. In that case, the deputies worked the overtime but at a higher cost to taxpayers.

The six were accused of rigging the Sheriff's Office's overtime assignments over a four-year period. Prosecutors say they assigned themselves lucrative overtime shifts guarding hospitalized inmates before the shifts were made available to rank-and-file deputies. Had regular deputies been assigned those shifts, it would have cost taxpayers about $300,000 less in the first year alone, authorities said.

The deputies all are on administrative leave without pay. Darrin McCray, then a lieutenant, was convicted of 10 felony counts consisting of official misconduct and organized scheme to defraud in November. He was sentenced to nearly 19 months in prison and lost his job at the Sheriff's Office.

In Logsdon's case, there was no cost to taxpayers, Lippman said, because he was entitled to the money. Logsdon was not ordered to pay it back.

Logsdon made headlines in December when he fatally shot a car theft suspect in Boynton Beach after he grabbed at something in his pockets. The State Attorney's Office ruled the shooting justified.

The corporal has numerous commendations on file, mostly for his work as a dog handler in helping catch fleeing suspects.

In the overtime case, Logsdon told investigators that Morrissey told him to submit the overtime slips until the clerical misclassification was rectified.

Jerome Burdi can be reached at jburdi@SunSentinel.com or 561-243-6531.